My Creative Christmas Gift

When I was young I always loved to color and write and as I grew older I came to know God and His Word and so putting all these things together seemed like a real blessing to me! What a delight it would be able to read and study the word of God, plus also be able to color it, write, and draw in it! That thought was exciting to me!

Previous to my purchase, I spent quite a lot of time reading about and viewing many of the different kinds of Journaling Bibles. I also did some careful research into the kinds of coloring supplies needed to color and/or journal in these bibles.

Finally, the time came that I felt I had found just the right Bible for me!
And, using a generous gift card that I had received from my nephew for Christmas, I ordered "My Creative Bible" online from Amazon.

The pink cloth cover was beautiful to look at and touch. The inside covers were filled with beautiful artwork to color. The pages had many inspiring artful verses and the typography was wonderful. I decided I would begin the New Year reading and coloring in my new Bible!

Having done a lot of previous reading and research on the proper and correct supplies to use, I decided to purchase some crayons, colored pencils, gel pens, highlighters, and markers. All these had their pros and cons, but I chose to give each a try. The markers, highlighters and pens I chose all said they would not bleed through so I figured they would be safe choices---NOT!!

My first experience with coloring in this Bible taught me a lesson physically and spiritually
(As God's word and life often does)

I decided to begin the New Year reading the book of James. A couple of different happenings in my life recently led me to make that choice. I had read James a few times before in my life and was familiar with it being, as I like to think of it, an "action" book. Therefore, I thought it would be a good place to begin the New Year as well as to begin my new journey of reading, coloring and journaling in "My Creative Bible".

Chapter One had three verses that stood out to me right away, so I used the yellow highlighter to highlight them, all well and good--no bleed thru.

In the margin of James-Page 1 was the verse James 1:17 in typographic artwork
"But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves" (KJV version)
Ah, one of my favorite verses! A great verse to begin my coloring with I thought!
Excited, I grabbed a "non bleed thru" marker and began coloring the word "doers".
Guess what! Bleed through happened!
Fortunately I had put a blank card stock page underneath to protect the next pages but even so, "doers" seeped thru into the backside of the current page!
Needless to say I stopped using the markers!

I also learned that the "non bleed thru" Gel Pens are not really safe to use in some cases as they also tend to show thru.

So, this experience showed me that the safe choices would be the highlighters, colored pencils and crayons.

The spiritual lesson that I learned through all of this is: that many times when we are excited to begin being "doers of the word" we make mistakes. We jump in and sometimes mess things up, even if we think we know what we are doing. In our excitement of "doing" we often forget to be cautious.
Then, if we err, we feel bad, we are sorry, and we become frustrated. We become discouraged. We feel like giving up because we don't know how to correct what we did and we are afraid to try again for fear we will mess things up even more!

But... guess what! God knows! He says" Don't worry, I can use your mistakes. Don't worry about it. Just keep trying. I can make something beautiful from all of it. Just "do" and leave the rest to me"

This is a good lesson for all of us, because in this life we will all mess up sometimes, even if we study, research and think we know what we are doing, at times things will happen and we will make mistakes.
But...God can still use us if we keep going. He will always be able to bring about His message from our mess-up.

So, my first coloring adventure was a great learning experience!

My mess-up has a message for me every time I see it and I am pleased that it happened. It helped me learn physically as well as spiritually and
every time I see the word "doer" in my bible I will be reminded to keep on keeping on, even if I "mess up".

I hope the same for you this New Year and all through your life as well. May all your "Mess-Up's" become "Messages" for you. that you and God can use for good!